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Every ordinary life story is extraordinary!

Writing motivation

Seize the Memoir-Writing Day!

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I noticed an ad in the obituary section of my local Chicago Tribune that said something along the lines of: “Every life story deserves to be told. Send in yours about your loved one.” This notice made me sad. While it might make you smile to think of your spouse, child or grandchild honoring you after your death by taking out an ad in a newspaper to publish a few paragraphs about your life, it’s nothing compared to a whole book that you write about your life in your own voice! In your autobiography, written well before your death, you take control of how your life is remembered.

It’s not unusual for a book we publish at Write My Memoirs to contain observations that come as a complete surprise to the author’s friends and family. Often, people don’t talk much about their childhood, wartime military service, traumatic events or some other aspect of their lives. The process of writing a memoir brings out those buried memories and the feelings the person experienced at the time. Also, details regarding names, dates and places are known only to the author. If that information isn’t written down, it often is lost once the person is no longer alive to report it.

Writing a biography of someone else is a rewarding task, too, but even that is much easier while the person is still alive to answer questions. If you’re thinking of writing about your own life or someone else’s, there’s no time like the present!

Listen to Yourself, Not the Experts’ Advice

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Reviewing some of the advice on Google about how to write a memoir, I’m struck by how much of it is exactly opposite to the advice we offer to Write My Memoirs members. If you’re trying to sell your memoir and hoping for a six-figure movie deal based on your life, then a lot of the conventional wisdom holds. You should tell compelling anecdotes, grab the reader right from the beginning with a great first line and show how much personal growth you’ve experienced. But if you’re doing what we do here—writing for your friends and family—all of that advice goes out the window. And there’s a tremendous freedom in knowing that you can just write however you want to write.

When the intended readers already love you, the blank screen isn’t so intimidating. You don’t have to be afraid to start that first sentence. You don’t have to worry that your writing isn’t good enough or you’ll do something “wrong.” Your account of your life, however you choose to explain it, will be cherished by the readers, because they know you personally. You really can’t go wrong.

So disregard any online “help” telling you that a chronological life story isn’t intriguing enough. Forget about crafting “setups” for plot lines that build until they reach a resolution, especially a “shocking” resolution. Don’t fret over whether your work will be considered a “memoir” or an “autobiography.” Who cares? When you hand out your book at church, the VFW hall, your family reunion or your community book fair, those people will appreciate every word. You’re a legend in their minds, and now they’ll have all of the details of how you turned out that way.

Welcome to the Redesigned Write My Memoirs!

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Everything looks new at Write My Memoirs, because everything is new! We have a new look and many new features. If you’re already a member, your work is still safe where you left it. Just follow the sign-in instructions, and you will find your account. If you’re just joining now, welcome! We hope your experience is rewarding as you set out to write and perhaps publish your memoir. We will help you along the way! From now on, we will be updating the Write My Memoirs blog regularly. Meanwhile, feel free to poke around at previous posts, where we’ve discussed many aspects of writing an autobiography.

Each life is unique; each life story is valuable and, typically, quite entertaining. You can gather up everything you’ve been posting on social media and cobble together a pretty compelling narrative. So tell us: when are you planning to write your autobiography? At Write My Memoirs, we can help you get started, avoid writer’s block in the middle of the process and publish your work when you’ve completed your book. We want to help—leave us a comment!

Writers: “The Custodians of Memory”

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Writers: “The Custodians of Memory”
We’re spending the early summer here discussing an essay on memoir writing by On Writing Well author William Zinsser. Last time, I shared the end of his essay, where he gave advice on how to and start writing your life story. Today, let’s look at the very beginning of his essay:
“One of the saddest sentences I know is ‘I wish I had asked my mother about that.’ Or my father. Or my grandmother. Or my grandfather. As every parent knows, our children are not as fascinated by our fascinating lives as we are. Only when they have children of their own—and feel the first twinges of their own advancing age—do they suddenly want to know more about their family heritage and all its accretions of anecdote and lore. ‘What exactly were those stories my dad used to tell about coming to America?’ ‘Where exactly was that farm in the Midwest where my mother grew up?’ Writers are the custodians of memory, and that’s what you must become if you want to leave some kind of record of your life and of the family you were born into.”
That’s a very powerful argument in support of writing a memoir. While you may not feel a burning desire to write an autobiography, it’s a service to your entire family to document your life’s various stories. Your memories stretch beyond your own experiences, back to the tales you heard your parents and grandparents tell. Your children and grandchildren may someday be very interested in all of that, even if right now they do not ask you about yourself.
http://theamericanscholar.org/how-to-write-a-memoir/#.UaTLItKsjTo
https://writemymemoirs.com/blog/meet-william-zinsser/

We’re spending the early summer here discussing an essay on memoir writing by On Writing Well author William Zinsser. Last time, I shared the end of his essay, where he gave advice on how to start writing your life story. Today, let’s look at the very beginning of his essay:

“One of the saddest sentences I know is ‘I wish I had asked my mother about that.’ Or my father. Or my grandmother. Or my grandfather. As every parent knows, our children are not as fascinated by our fascinating lives as we are. Only when they have children of their own—and feel the first twinges of their own advancing age—do they suddenly want to know more about their family heritage and all its accretions of anecdote and lore. ‘What exactly were those stories my dad used to tell about coming to America?’ ‘Where exactly was that farm in the Midwest where my mother grew up?’ Writers are the custodians of memory, and that’s what you must become if you want to leave some kind of record of your life and of the family you were born into.”

That’s a very powerful argument in support of writing a memoir. While you may not feel a burning desire to write an autobiography, it’s a service and a kindness to your entire family to document your life’s various stories. Your memories stretch beyond your own experiences, back to the tales you heard your parents and grandparents tell. Your children and grandchildren may someday be very interested in all of that, even if right now they do not ask you about yourself.

Political Autobiographies Play a Role in Elections

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I happen to be in Florida today, the day of the state’s primary. As you might expect, the local airwaves have been flooded with political ads. They contain a lot of “he said, he said” statements. It makes me wonder why these candidates never penned a memoir to document their own lives and more definitively present their views.

Think back to the last presidential election. In the democratic primary, Hillary Clinton had her husband’s reputation, her four-year record as First Lady and her term as a New York senator. Barack Obama, still only in his 40s, already had two autobiographical books: Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope. The titles became common phrases, and suddenly these books were selling “like hotcakes.” The words were inspirational and trumped any Obama narrative the Clinton opposition and, later in the general election the John McCain campaign, could contrive.

Yet, among the 27 books Newt Gingrich has authored, not one is a memoir. Mitt Romney, with his diverse experience as a businessman, governor and Olympics chief, hasn’t sat down to write his life story. Here in Florida, Romney’s ads do mention an autobiography—Ronald Reagan’s—to use as evidence to counter some of Gingrich’s claims about being the heir to the Reagan legacy. So Mitt realizes the value of a written memoir, yet hasn’t crafted his own. And you know whom he’ll face if he makes it to the next election? The same President Barack Obama who won last time with the power of two very influential autobiographies.

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Then just set up a chapter and start writing your memoir. Don’t worry about rules. There are no rules to writing your memoir; there are only trends. These trends are based on techniques and features identified in current top-selling memoirs. At best, they’re the flavor of the month. If you’re capturing your life in print for your family, for your own gratification or to inspire readers, rather than aiming to set off Hollywood screenplay bidding wars, these trends don’t even apply to you. You’ll write the memoir that suits you best, and it will be timeless, not trend-driven.There are no rules, but there are four steps:

1. Theme/framework
2. Writing
3. Editing/polishing
4. Self-publishing

You’ve researched this, too, and you’ve been shocked at the price for getting help with any one of those steps, much less all four. That’s because most memoir sites promise to commercialize your work. They’ll follow a formula based on current memoir trends, because they want to convince you that they can turn your memoir into a best-seller. These sites overwhelm you with unnecessary information not to help you, the memoir author, but to address Search Engine Optimization (SEO) algorithms so they can sell more.

That’s not what we do at Write My Memoirs. Our small community of coaches, writers and editors are every bit as skilled as any you’ll find, and we charge appropriately for their expertise and the time they’ll spend helping you craft a compelling, enjoyable read. But you won’t pay an upcharge for other websites’ commercialization, the marketing that follows, and the pages of intimidating “advice.” You can sell your book if you like—we have ISBNs available for you—but our organic process of capturing your story takes a noncommercial path.

If you want help with any or all of the four steps above, choose from our services or save money by selecting one of our packages. If you’d like to talk about what’s right for you, schedule a call. One year from now, you can be holding your published memoir in your hand. And at that point, it will be a big deal!

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